Mystery Person 06 Poem by Kim Barney

The mystery person's father had his children learn reading, writing, and simple arithmetic.Beyond that, he considered schooling a waste of time. Better uses could be found for children at home. [the father] feared for the soul of an idle child. College was a word of vague meaning. He was separated from colleges by two thousand miles and a world of indifference. He had picked up what he needed in the way of education as the need arose. By that method no time was wasted in accumulating a surplus. [The mystery person], in the main, followed the same method, the difference being that his needs were much greater than his father's. For instance, making the first of his many trips to Belgium when he was forty-seven, he soon lost patience with the slow process of transacting business through an interpreter and learned French.

A bronze plaque hangs on the wall of the Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre factory in Liége, Belgium. On it is the likeness of a man: neither young nor old but balding, with a medium-full mustache. The wording on the plaque is in French. In English translation it reads:

To the memory of...1855-1926. This is the place where, thirty years previously, he came from Ogden to have his first automatic pistol manufactured and where, on the 26th of November,1926, while he was busily engaged at work death overtook the greatest firearms inventor the world has ever known.